The roaring nineties : a new history of the world's most prosperous decade / Joseph E. Stiglitz

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Boom and bust: seeds of destruction -- Miracle workers, or lucky mistakes? -- The all-powerful Fed and its role in inflating the bubble -- Deregulation run amok -- Creative accounting -- The banks and the bubble -- Tax cuts: feeding the frenzy -- Making risk a way of life -- Globalization: early forays -- Enron -- Debunking the myths -- Toward a new democratic idealism: vision and values -- Epilogue: further lessons on how to mismanage the economy.

One reason the invisible hand of market economics may be invisible is that it may not exist. So says former World Bank economist Stiglitz in his analysis of what went wrong with the economic boom and bust of the 1990s. His central contention is that the market fundamentalism of the neoliberals was far too excessive and that a role for government in managing and regulating the economy is not only salubrious, but absolutely necessary. The role of finance in the economy and politicians' cowardliness before elicits broad criticism as well.